Support us financially by purchasing from

Julius RÖNTGEN (1855-1932)
Symphony No 7 in F minor ‘Edinburgh’ (1930) [21:57]
Symphony No 14 in D major ‘Winterthur’ (1930) [9:54]
Symphony No 12 in C major ‘In Babylone’ (1930) [10:08]
Symphony No 11 in G minor ‘Wirbel’ (1930) [14:48]
Symphony No 23 in C minor (1932) [16:38]
Symphony No 22 in F-sharp major (1931) [12:04]
Symphony No 24 in E major (1932) [17:34]
Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt (7, 12 & 14), Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra/David Porcelijn
rec. 2006 Konzerthalle Carl-Philipp-Emanuel Bach Frankfurt Oder (7, 12 & 14); 2007, Helsingborg Konserthus
CPO 777 309-2 [41:59 + 61:04]

CPO’s leisurely survey of the complete symphonies of Julius Röntgen continues with this double disc which includes seven more such works. I say leisurely because according to the recording information, these performances – which are every bit as good as we have come to expect of this composer and this label – have been slumbering in the CPO vaults for over fourteen years. Five of the symphonies included here are abbreviated single movement works with only Symphony No 23 in F-sharp major breaking the quarter hour mark.

The first disc opens with a more traditional four movement work but even this is less than twenty two minutes in its entirety. This is Symphony No 7 in F minor ‘Edinburgh’. The subtitle derives from Röntgen being awarded an honorary doctorate by Edinburgh University in 1930 with Donald Tovey, the professor of music there, considering Röntgen as the last link back to the German masters of Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert. I listened to the work before reading the liner from which the information above was gleaned. Whether by accident, design or artistic preference, this symphony does sound like a series of “hommage” to these composers – with some Bach perhaps thrown into the mix as well. Röntgen is too individual a composer for this to sound like weak pastiche but the sense of conscious influence is hard if not impossible to ignore. The symphony opens with a quiet but purposeful striding bass line over a fugally treated theme that will bind the whole work together. Röntgen soon develops this simple theme into a powerful and dynamically contrapuntal movement. One imagines that Tovey with his extensive written and musical analysis of Bach and Beethoven especially would have approved of Röntgen’s technical skill. In part this work embodies my ongoing reaction to music by this composer. Whenever I encounter it – especially in this excellent CPO series – without fail I enjoy the music. But there is a kind of emotional detachment which means I enjoy but do not love these scores so I rarely find myself drawn back to them. The liner mentions a contemporary review which notes the warmth of the reception by the Edinburgh audience at its premiere. That is not hard to understand – this is attractive and accessible music, by no means simplistic but by no means dauntingly complex.

If the first movement doffs its hat at Bach then the second movement allegro molto e agitato has more than just an echo of a Brucknerian equivalent. Here, as throughout the first disc, the playing of the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt is impressively assured in music that must have been unfamiliar [across the two discs, four of the works were given their premieres at these recording sessions]. The baton passes to Brahms’ shade for the third movement andante tranquillo which is again beautifully played. The finale draws together all of the influences and reminiscences of earlier musical material bringing the work to a satisfyingly dynamic close. One of Röntgen’s great skills is the way he does compress so much material into such a brief time span without the music sounding attenuated or under developed.

The first disc is completed with two one movement symphonies No 14 in D major ‘Winterthur’ and No 12 in C major ‘In Babylone’. Winterthur is a town in Switzerland where Röntgen went to stay for Christmas 1930 with his new wife. The liner rightly describes these single movement works as miniatures or vignettes. They are certainly attractive works although whether they are truly ‘symphonic’ in the traditional sense of the word I am not sure. With regard to No 14 the liner tries to make some frankly speculative links with one theme “as if the composer were executing a little dance around the Christmas tree.” Charming and deft this music most certainly is I am not sure there is any clear programme at all. In Babylone turns out to be an old Dutch song. Röntgen had used this same song as the theme for a set of piano variations dedicated to the exiled German Kaiser Wilhelm II who had been exiled in the Netherlands since 1918 and he subtitled the variations “a review of bygone times”. Which might explain why when he returned to this theme for his Symphony No 12, it has a distinct sense of a Baroque Overture in the Handelian manner with Zadokian string figurations and chord progressions and resplendent brass. It really is rather wonderfully heroic. Barely three minutes in – well the whole work is just ten! – an abrupt modulation brings about a complete change of mood to a rather pastoral minuet. Throughout this work – and indeed all of the symphonies presented here – Röntgen shows a real skill with his orchestration. His handling of the orchestra is not especially original but it is certainly effective and grateful to listen to. Textures are always clean. After another three minutes, there is a brief quiet recollection of the opening material before another of Röntgen’s beloved fugal passages. Not truly a fugue by any means but contrapuntal figurations alternating with triple time accompanying strings. At around 8:40 Röntgen finally reveals the In Babylone theme presented by the trumpets in octaves with the orchestra underpinned by a rather theatrical organ part. I must admit I really enjoyed the cinematic grandeur of this although quite how such a slight work reached such an epic conclusion after just ten minutes I have no idea.

The second disc of this set was recorded nine months later in Helsingborg. There is an interesting contrast to be made in the sound of the two orchestras. Make no mistake both are very fine and well-recorded to boot. But the Swedish orchestra has a slightly leaner sound with brighter brass and are recorded in a less mellow acoustic than their Frankfurt colleagues. This disc contains another three single movement works – No 23 in C minor the longest at 16:38, with the disc completed by Röntgen’s final symphonic statement No 24 in E major where he returns to ‘standard’ four movement form. The disc opens with No 11 in G minor ‘Drum-roll’. The title alone would seem to suggest a nod at least to Haydn but there is no real association except that the work opens with a drum-roll. Remarkably, the liner states that the piece was drafted in just two days in July 1930 with the orchestration completed by the following October. A recurring striking feature of these single movement works is the sharp juxtaposition of material and moods. Röntgen is not seeking an organic growth in the manner of Sibelius’ Symphony No 7 instead – as previously mentioned - seeming to want to compress as much diverse material into these brief spans as possible.

Another consideration is just how prolific Röntgen was in his later years. He did not live to the great age of another multi-symphonist such Havergal Brian, but if the liner is to be believed, he wrote his last seventeen symphonies in his final two years of life aged 75 to 77 years between 1930 and 1932. By any measure that is an impressive burst of creativity. The final group of three works appearing between October 1931 and March 1932 – the composer died the following September. Clearly Röntgen was never a revolutionary and he remained in thrall to his favoured Germanic models right to the end of his composing life. However, this final group of symphonies does show a loosening of those musical ties. Interestingly, it struck me that his melodies start to take on more of a Scandinavian shape – I wondered if he was familiar with Nielsen’s music at all. In Symphony No 24 the finale has the character of a peasant stamping dance with the displaced metre reminiscent of some of Grieg’s folk-inspired music. The fact that Röntgen retired from public life in the mid 1920’s and that all of the works on this second disc received their first performances with this recording shows that Röntgen was writing very much for himself in these latter years. As ever with this composer’s symphonies, I found the music to be wholly enjoyable, effective and intriguing without that last drop of emotional engagement or heft that would lead me to return to these scores anything but infrequently.

That said, the performances under David Porcelijn are quite excellent – I cannot imagine them being bettered even if another recording company believed they merited more than one recording. Certainly, those already collecting this series will not hesitate and neither should they as these fine performances further our understanding of this composer’s individual art. At just over 100 minutes for the pair of discs – which on Amazon and Presto in the UK are being sold for around £25.00 – this is not good value and as such unlikely to be the entry point for many collectors. By my estimate there still remain about six more symphonies before the CPO cycle is complete – perhaps one or even two more could have been incorporated into this set. Certainly the music deserves to be heard although in the final reckoning I find it skilled and interesting rather than utterly compelling.

Nick Barnard